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It used to be a fairly well-trodden showbiz path: ridiculously famous and rich rock band starts hanging out with film-makers; film-makers try and make a film; film struggles to get funding; ridiculously famous and rich rock band steps in; day is saved. That’s how Monty Python’sLife of Brian finally got finished after all — caps doffed to Pink Floyd and George Harrison for stepping up to the mark.

And now Coldplay are keeping his tradition alive by co-financing a new British thriller from the director of the Ian Dury biopic Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll.

OK, it’s their old friend Mat Whitecross, who they’ve known since their college days, and who directed a lot of their videos…and Chris Martin‘s wife is hardly unaffiliated to the movie business…but still: noble tradition, kept alive.

The film is called Ashes, and it will star the very great Ray Winstone, together with Jim Sturgess and Lesley Manville. Keeping things on a very matesy basis, it was written by Paul Viragh, who wrote Sex And Drugs and Drugs and Rock and Roll, which also starred Ray as Ian Dury’s dad.

The band will all be named as executive producers on the film, which they’re funding in association with the Isle of Man financing company CinemaNX.

There’s no word on who is doing the soundtrack as yet, but rumors persist that there’s a scene in which one of the characters falls in a vat of dye and becomes “all yellow,” for which the execs claim to have found the perfect song.